


hazardous

by infinitebees



Series: the angel's share [3]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 13:39:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13388967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinitebees/pseuds/infinitebees
Summary: Julian and Asra meet the Count's paramour. Julian has some revelations about the Red Plague, and about Asra's past. (pre-masquerade ficlet and rumination on the nature of the plague)





	hazardous

When it’s day in the palace witchlights are never a necessity. Whoever had built the palace had been sure to utilize natural light to its full potential such that often, walking through a hall, Julian feels as though he’s in a garden and not between wide walls beneath a tall, arched ceiling. With the windows open he can smell the air, and it almost tempers his dread at the prospect of another meeting with Count Lucio. Almost. **  
**

The past few weeks’ research have been fruitless, and it shows, and Lucio has no qualms with rubbing that in Juilan’s face. Perhaps it’s what he deserves, ultimately – if he weren’t such a hack he’d have a cure by now, he thinks. If he weren’t a hack there wouldn’t be an island on fire out at sea, a light to join that of the stars at night. If he –

“Ilya,” says Asra, taking Julian’s long hand in his, “I can hear you thinking from here.” Asra, at the very least, is usually here to stop him these days when he starts to spiral. A godsend, though Asra would resent such a word. A role he didn’t ask for, certainly. “It’ll be fine. Take a breath. All we have to do is talk to him.”

Talk to Lucio, talk to Nadia, talk to the courtiers, talk to Lucio again. Have various desk decorations thrown at his general vicinity, missing the mark by far but still close enough to let him know it’s directed at him. Julian can’t remember the last time he’s slept a full night, despite how many times Asra has tried to get him to drink one of his teas.

“Maybe,” Julian grumbles. “Or maybe this time he’ll finally have me killed for gross incompetence.”

Asra laughs in the uneasy way he does when he’s not sure whether or not Julian’s joking (to be fair it’s hard to tell, Julian thinks, even for him. At least Asra  _lets_  him joke about things like this). “I’m sure he won’t. You’re too lovely to kill, even he’s got to see that.”

“Well now I know you’re – Oh.”

They hear the clicking of heels behind them and turn to see the court mage striding out of the Count’s quarters and towards them. Julian had been holding Asra’s hand but, startled, he drops it as though he’s been burned; Asra turns to him to regard him with mingled surprise and amusement. It’s still a new thing, the two of them; something he wants to talk about to anyone who’ll listen, and yet he also thinks to himself,  _This is ours. Just ours._ He can’t return his gaze, so instead he watches as Hazela approaches them with a confidence you’d expect from royalty, not a woman who’d spent the better part of her life cobbling rags together to make herself look finer than she was.

(They’re not supposed to know this – she’s taken pains to ensure that few people will ever remember her as anyone who ever wanted for anything. But word gets around a palace the way it couldn’t anywhere else. It’s its own microcosm, its own organism for better or worse.)

They call her “Hazard” in the palace. Julian hadn’t yet been there, but if you look closely at the floor of the main ballroom you can see where they repaired it from the first assassination attempt she prevented, where the roots had shot up through the ground and killed with a cruelty that made itself felt in her hands, in the stance of her body. And Julian’s watched the way she works with fire: the words “reckless abandon” come to mind.  _Hazard indeed,_  thinks Julian as she stops some yards away from him and Asra.

“I suppose the two of you mean to see the Count now?” she drawls, and Julian pretends not to notice the string of love bites from her shoulder to her jaw. She’s met with silence from them both, but that seems to be answer enough for her, for she nods after a moment. “Well, you’ll hopefully find him more agreeable now than you did yesterday.” A knife-blade smile, exposing too-sharp teeth. Julian fails to suppress a shiver. “You’re welcome.”

 _Don’t ask her. Don’t ask her, Julian._  But, of course: “Aren’t you worried?” The words slip from his mouth before he’s even finished warning himself not to speak. She tilts her head to the side and gentles her mouth into something more curious than dangerous. “About catching it from him,” he clarifies. “The plague, I mean.” And maybe his insufferable smugness.

“Aren’t you, doctor?” She stretches her hand out in front of her and holds it to the light slanting through a window, examining the way it plays against the shadows on her skin. A beetle, red like fresh blood, alights on her outstretched finger and sits there, as though regarding her with the same detached curiosity with which she’s looking at it. Then she waves her hand and it flutters off in a gentle buzz. “Is the Consul worried? Given the frequency of his ‘visits’ with the Count?  And what of the families of those poor souls who’ve caught it? We send them to the Lazaret, but you know it isn’t so the rest of us won’t catch it.

“You’re trying to figure out why it doesn’t catch the way a cold does. I’ve read over some of your notes, doctor.” Julian feels his stomach flip, as though he’s been caught doing something he oughtn’t. Silly, because research is exactly what he’s supposed to be doing. “I’ll admit I didn’t understand much of it, and your handwriting… well. But I did understand something — there’s nothing natural about this plague.” She shrugs. “So to put it briefly, no. I worry about very little.”

Julian coughs and scratches at the nape of his neck, a nervous habit that he never could break. He hadn’t meant to even hint at Hazela’s relationship with the Count (which is itself its own puzzle, really), or for it to turn into an entire conversation. But here he is, and here they all are together, and all he can think is how badly he wishes he could find a way to walk past her without talking any more.

But when he moved to keep walking, Haz spoke again: “The plague won’t end until he does.” She points backwards towards Lucio’s bedroom door with a laconic smile.

“What – haha, um. What do you mean by that?”

Asra hasn’t spoken this whole time, but now he says, “She means that the plague is going to keep taking lives for as long as Lucio is around.”

“Clever one. You said it, not me.”

“And you don’t feel any responsibility?” says Julian, suddenly indignant. “With how close the two of you are, you -”

“… Would be the first suspect. I’m not risking my neck for anything, my dear. But you do what you need to do,” here she gazes pointedly at Asra ( _He’d do it,_ she thinks to herself with a grim satisfaction.  _If anyone will_.), “and I’ll do what I like.”

She walks between them a nod, but she doesn’t make it far before Asra speaks again. “How long have you known?” he asks, his voice dangerously even.

Hazela turns her head to smile beatifically at him. “I don’t know anything for sure, Asra.”

“ _How long have you known_?”

When Asra feels anything strongly, sometimes it comes off him in waves. Julian can feel it now, and he’s sure Haz must as well. Usually Asra’s anger is cold; he felt it that evening in the library when he took him by the shoulders and told him he didn’t want him to die. But right now it’s burning hot and Julian knows that if he were to take Asra’s hand it really would burn him. Julian has never been afraid of Asra. Intimidated, perhaps. In awe. But never afraid. Now, though, it shoots through him even though he isn’t the target of his ire.

Finally Hazela turns her entire body around and, somehow, stands a little straighter than she had before. Julian feels the crackle in the air that he always does whenever Hazela uses magic.  “Not long enough to save her,” she says, “if that’s what you’re asking. What’s done is done, Asra. Your head’s been on that island for too long. I suggest you come home.”

This time when she moves to leave, no one stops her.


End file.
